Great Week!

The storm here wasn’t that bad last week.  The train station here was working fine, but somewhere there were trees on the tracks and so we weren’t able travel as planned on last P-day.  But here the storm wasn’t too bad.  There were some winds, about 30 mph.  Not a big deal.  It rained really hard.   Like an inch and a half of rain in 3 hours.  But in England the rain dries up fast, not like back home.  If you get an inch in 3 hours at home, you are shut down.  But here if they get 5 inches of rain, within like 5 hours it is dry again. The ground just soaks it all up.

November 5^th is fireworks day here. It’s a day of celebration for Englanders.  The fireworks start early, they have been shooting them off the last two nights already.  Having a flat on the fourth floor gives us a great view of them.

We had a great Zone Meeting this week. Our Zone Leader said “A mission is the school for life.”  You will experience disappointment and discouragement your whole mission. But it doesn’t matter, you must push on, never losing faith. You can’t give up ever.  When you go home, you will continue to have discouragement at times.  So will you give up your job then?  Will you tell your kids, sorry I gave up? Sorry that you can’t have this, I gave up, I can’t handle hard times.  WOW!  What he said was so good, such a great man and super dedicated to the work.   Our other Zone Leader has also been a great help to me in giving me tips of how to better do things as a missionary.  Ideas of how to find success and better control my inputs.

On work over on Tuesday, we had pretty good success on town centre, better than before.  Then on Friday we went back to town centre and had a good day of finding.  We had a potential appointment set up and I hadn’t thought a lot about it.  But Saturday morning as I was in the shower, I was prompted to set a date for her baptism.   This seemed strange because we really hadn’t said much to this lady, just a few words.  Still I was prompted to pray to set a date.  I knew that December 7^th would work.  We headed to the lesson and met her in town.  We went into the library to teach her there. The spirit was so strong, right there in the library.  She really expressed interest in joining the church.   When we finished the lesson, she was like I need baptism.  I was shocked and was like no way.  So we extended the date of December 7^th. She wanted to meet the next day, which was Sunday.   She came to church with us and we were able to watch “Restoration” at the Sunday School class.  The one that portrays the early life of Joseph Smith.  The spirit was again so strong.  There were 4 missionaries there and another lady from the ward.  We all bore testimony of the truthfulness of everything we saw and of the Book of Mormon and the church.  She said she wanted to be baptized sooner than December 7^th.  WOW!  We explained  it is possible, but she has to come to church at least 3 times.  So we could possibly have a baptism this month.  She is so ready for the gospel.  She is a great lady!

Good week here in England!  Love, Elder Stevenson